Midway through Mike Trigg’s debut novel, his protagonist — a disillusioned Silicon Valley lifer named Sam Hughes — looks on as the Millennial developer of a booze-delivery app steps out of a limo and exchanges “bro hugs and high fives” with his friends. Sam instantly dislikes the cocky founder of the fictional DoorBuzz, but he fears that they’re not so different.
“I just feel like everything I’ve told myself for the last twenty years has been a lie,” he says. “I pretend to have this higher purpose, but really what motivates me is envy of other people who have more success, more esteem, more money.”
“Bit Flip” is a crisis-of-conscience tale, a twisty, acerbic corporate thriller in which Sam must decide what to do after learning a former employer has been falsifying its bottom line. Trigg, who lives in Menlo Park, is plenty familiar with the story’s setting.
A graduate of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, he’s run and worked for Silicon Valley firms for two decades. Over the years, Trigg shared many workplace anecdotes with wife Leslie Trigg, a medical device executive.
“I’d tell her a story that was amazing or eye-rolling or humorous,” he said, “and she had this refrain of ‘You should write a book, you should write a book.’ ”
He took her advice, though he was still finding his narrative voice when the pandemic started.
“I was working at a startup that ended up shutting down during COVID,” he recalled, “and I realized: if I’m ever going to make the jump to writing full time, now’s the time to do it.”
The Silicon Valley of “Bit Flip” — the title is an industry term, Trigg writes, for “the changing of one’s mind 180 degrees” — is awash in brash men who boast that they’re “absolutely crushing it” at work, making a “killer” new product that’ll earn them a lucrative “exit” when they leave their respective companies.
The book satirizes paranoid billionaires, opportunistic startups and bogus iconoclasts. At 45, Sam would like to be immune to industry groupthink, but he’s regrettably status-conscious.
“I drive a nice car, I wear fleece vests, I even drink (expletive) kombucha, for Christ’s sake!” he says. “Every day, I further perpetuate the cliché that I can’t stand.”
Meanwhile, the narrative is a subtle plea for Silicon Valley to be held to a higher standard of accountability.
“As Sam is going through these moral dilemmas about what to do,” Trigg said, “whether to blow the whistle on this, he’s sort of like, ‘Who do I even blow the whistle to? Who is overseeing this?’ ”
He added, “We can and should regulate tech more aggressively.”
As he’s written on his blog (www.miketrigg.com), Trigg has some specific ideas for compelling tech companies to accept more responsibility for the content on their platforms and making it easier for consumers to shield their personal information. He also suggests that major tech firms should be required to report the results of product testing, similar to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process for new drugs.
“Bit Flip” understands the righteous anger directed at Silicon Valley. As Sam says, the Valley has crafted deliberately addictive products and “compromise(d) our privacy.” His ex-employer is breaking the law. What will he do about it? That’s the question that fuels Trigg’s admirable novel.
Bit Flip
By Mike Trigg
(SparkPress; 288 pages; $17.95)
Readers’ Books presents Mike Trigg with Laila Tarraf: In-person event. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 7. Free. 130 E. Napa St., Sonoma. www.readersbooks.com